Lucy Hargrett Draper was born on a South Georgia Wayne County farm in 1941, the eldest of four daughters and the first in her mother's family to graduate from college. Her advanced degrees in history, education and law were applied to a half-century of advocacy on behalf of educational, economic and legal equality for women. Draper has been actively involved with a number of women's rights organizations: She founded the Atlanta N.O.W. Speaker's Bureau (1971-1973), West Point N.O.W. at the U.S. Military Academy (1973-1976), Kansas W.E.A.L. (1977), Georgia W.E.A.L. (1978), the Georgia Coalition for the Rights of Women (1996), and the Democratic Women's Council. She was also an active member of ERA Georgia, Inc. (late 1970s-1982). Draper co-authored the Georgia Women's Bill of Rights and led numerous conferences, demonstrations, marches and parades on behalf of women's equality and civil rights. She volunteered to teach in the all-minority school system during the era of segregation, and was awarded the A.C.L.U.'s Bill of Rights Award and was the first recipient of the Mamie K. Taylor Award. Draper's ongoing legacies are her public educational institutions' initiatives which she established with her husband, Stephen. They include a three-year effort (1973-1976) to admit women to the five U.S. service academies, including the U.S. Military Academy. With a continued focus on public education, in 1995 Draper founded the Georgia State University Library's Georgia Women's Movement Project, which culminated, in partnership with Margaret Curtis and key GSU and ERA Georgia, Inc. colleagues, in the GSU Library's Women's Collection. She also established the Lucy Hargrett Draper Federal ERA Research Collection (1996) and an endowment to support that collection. Draper was an extremely active member of the Women's Collection Acquisition and Fundraising Task Forces, travelling across Georgia to raise funds and gather collections for the Georgia Women's Movement Project. In 1996, Lucy and Stephen Draper established a second archives -- the Lucy Hargrett Draper Center & Archives for the Study of the Rights of Women -- in the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia. This archives houses materials from the first Woman Suffrage and British Women's Suffrage Movements (1840-1920).

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